What happened
On a January 2022 broadcast about the banning of the graphic novel Maus, she said the Holocaust “isn’t about race” but “man’s inhumanity to man,” involving “two groups of white people.”
“The Holocaust isn’t about race … it’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
Under each definition
Example 4 territory: mischaracterizing the Nazis’ racial genocide is a form of Holocaust distortion — though she did not deny it happened.
Guideline 5 targets denial/minimization of the Holocaust’s occurrence or scale; misdescribing its nature doesn’t squarely fit.
Captured only if treated as distortion; Nexus weighs intent, and hers was widely judged ignorant rather than hostile.
Not about Israel.
Who called it antisemitic
The ADL and many Jewish leaders; ABC News management.
The defense
Prompt, full apology the same day (“I stand corrected”) and again on-air alongside the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt. Widely read as a flawed conflation of race with skin color, not malice.
Outcome
Suspended from The View for two weeks; returned afterward.
In their words
No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race. … Holocaust distortion is dangerous.
Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fueled genocide and mass murder.
It is indeed about race, because Hitler and the Nazis considered the Jews to be an inferior race. … I regret my comments … and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people.
The verdicts above are how each framework would most likely treat this case — illustrative guidance, not official rulings. The 3D test applies only to Israel-related cases, so it reads “N/A” elsewhere. See the Definition tab for each framework’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.